Heaven and hell
Heaven and hell are not geographical, they are psychological, they are your psychology. And this is not a question to be decided on the day of judgment. The human mind is so clever: in avoiding, in escaping, Christians, Mohammedans and Jews have created a concept of the last day when everybody is to be judged -- you will be taken out of your grave and judged. Those who have followed Jesus, who have been good, who have believed, will go to heaven; those who have misbehaved, who have not followed Jesus, who have not been to church, will be thrown into hell. Christian hell is one of the most ridiculous things. It is eternal, there is no end to it. This seems injustice, sheer injustice; whatsoever sin you have committed no punishment which is eternal can be just. Bertrand Russell somewhere has joked, "If I calculate all my sins, sins that I have committed and sins that I have not committed, only brooded over -- if even they are included -- the hardest judge can't send me to jail for more than four years. And Christianity sends you to hell forever." Bertrand Russell has written a book, Why I am not a Christian; this is one of his arguments. It is a beautiful argument because the whole thing seems to be ridiculous.
If, as Hindus say, you have committed millions of sins in millions of lives, it may look logical to send a person to hell for eternity. But Christians believe in only one life, a life of seventy years. How can you commit so much sin that you deserve eternal hell? If you commit sin continuously for seventy years, even then eternal hell doesn't look just. The whole thing seems to be revengeful: so God is throwing you into hell because of your sins, because you were disobedient, because you were rebellious, because you didn't listen to him. It seems to be revenge, but revenge can be unjust. Is it punishment? It seems ridiculous.
The human mind has created a last judgment day. Why? - why wait for the last day? The mind always postpones, pushes things ahead: the problem is not right here and now, it is a question of the last day, so we will see. The problem is not urgent, we will see what happens. There are ways and means... In the last moment you can follow Jesus, in the last moment you can surrender and say to God, "I was a sinner." You can confess and be forgiven. God is infinite compassion, God is love; he is going to forgive you.
Christians have evolved a technique of confession. You commit sin, and then you go to the priest and confess; confessed, you are relieved. If you confess honestly, you are ready to sin again; the past sin is forgiven. Once you know the trick, the key -- that you can commit a sin and be forgiven -- who is going to prevent you from committing more? So the same people keep on coming to the priest every Sunday and go on confessing. Sometimes the ego is such that people confess sins they never committed. The ego is such that if you start confessing, you may become so involved in it that you may start confessing sins you never committed. To be a greater sinner is so ego-filling -- the greater the sinner, the greater will be the forgiveness of the divine.
It has been said by those studying Leo Tolstoy's autobiographical notes deeply, that many sins he says he committed he never committed at all. He is enjoying. Jean-Jacques Rousseau has written Confessions, his autobiography; the sins he confesses, he never committed. The same is possible with Mahatma Gandhi; in his autobiography the things he depicts himself as committing may be exaggerations. This is how the ego works: whatever you say you take to the extreme, then there is the beautiful feeling that you have confessed. Last judgment, confession are tricks of the mind. Heaven and hell are not at the end, they are here and now. Every moment the door opens; every moment you go on wavering between heaven and hell. It is a moment-to-moment question, it is urgent; in a single moment you can move from hell to heaven, from heaven to hell.
Heaven and hell are not very distant, they are neighbors; only a small fence divides them. You can jump that fence, even without a gate. You go on jumping from this to that. In the morning you may be in heaven; by evening you are in hell. This moment heaven, that moment hell. It is just an attitude, just a state of your mind, just how you are feeling. Many times, in a single life, you may visit hell, and many times you may visit heaven. In a single day also...